79: Reinventing Ourselves with Susan Kahn

Edgy Ideas

This conversation goes deep into an unplanned examination of the troubles of the world and arises from these to explore the changing workplace and how we reinvent ourselves.
Susan is a Jew who lives in London, and she describes her experience with both the rise of anti-Semitism and the sadness at what is happening in Gaza, as well as her deep desire for justice and peace for Israeli, Jewish, and Palestinian people. She recently returned from visiting Israel and then Poland for the March of the Living 2024 to remember the Holocaust. Simon and Susan share how even talking about these issues seems dangerous and yet so necessary as the world becomes more divided.
The podcast returns to the theme of reinventing ourselves and the changing nature of the workplace. Susan shares a tale from her book reflecting on the need for a much more holistic understanding of the world and ourselves within it.
We can easily see ourselves and others in partial ways, which doesn’t allow the full expression of our shared humanity. Simon reads a beautiful passage at the end of Susan’s book, called On Transience, drawing on Freud's 1916 essay.
This conversation is rich and touches on our deep humanity. Enjoy!
Bio
Susan Kahn is a business psychologist, a speaker, and an academic. She is a chartered psychologist, coaching psychologist, and supervisor with the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Association of Business Psychologists. She works as an executive coach, consultant, mediator, and observer of working life.
She has a particular interest in the behaviour of people at work and below-surface dynamics in organisations. She studied organisational consultancy using psychoanalytic methods at Tavistock and did her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, where she teaches coaching psychology and established the Masters in Coaching Psychology. She also works as a group relations consultant. She uses psychoanalytic observation as a research method and has written about the psychoanalysis of endings and resilience. She is a board member of
This Can Happen: empowering workplace mental health, ISPSO and OPUS.
Her latest book is called Reinvent Yourself: Psychological Insights That Will Transform Your Work Life. Purchase it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvent-Yourself-Psychological-Insights-Transform/dp/1398613312
Get in touch: www.drskahn.com